PhD Supervision - Areas of Interest

This page provides information about staff areas of interest/expertise with regards to PhD supervision. Additionally, some staff have keywords/tags to describe their research and teaching interests, enabling you to search for a supervisor using these keywords/tags.

 

 

Paul

Baker, Paul

PhD Students

I will be on sabbatical from August 2012-August 2013 and will not be able to take any new students until I return.

Most of my PhD students are involved in corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, language and identities or a combination of these. My current PhD students are working on the following topics:

  • the construction of gender identity in Iranian bloggers
  • a corpus study examining how The Guardian reports on the topic of journalism.
  • a corpus-based comparison of two academic books about Wahhabi Islam, focussing on the use of collocation to create ideology
  • a corpus study examining construction of in and out groups in American newspapers.

Recent PhDs I supervised to completion:

  • a corpus-based examination of the concept of political correctness in British broadsheet newspapers
  • the language of marriage rituals in Botswana
  • combining corpus approaches and CDA to examine discourses of terrorism in the British and Chinese popular press
  • combining corpus approaches and CDA to examine discourses of homophobia in a right-wing political organisation
  • a corpus study to compare lexical bundle use of Chinese learners of English with native speakers of English
  • a corpus study of keywords to examine gender identity in British and Malaysian children's writing


 

David Barton

Barton, David

Language Online. Local literacies; Vernacular literacies; Ethnographic studies of literacy practices in communities, workplaces, educational settings and online; The textually mediated social world; Adult literacy education; The language practices of Web2 sites such as Flickr.


 

Tineke Brunfaut

Brunfaut, Tineke

I am especially interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of language testing (in particular, for academic purposes), and reading and listening research (in particular, reading/listening in a foreign language and academic reading/listening).

I am currently supervising PhD students working on the following themes:

  • Quantitative modelling of difficulty in reading test items
  • Exploring anchor-based methods for judgementally estimating item difficulty in English for academic purposes reading test items
  • Investigating the construct of Language in Use tasks
  • Investigating the characteristics of language test specifications and item writer guidelines, and their effect on item development
  • Teacher-prepared coursework assessments and curriculum reform
  • Washback of the Exit-Level Examination Reform for Foreign Languages in Austria


 

Martin Bygate

Bygate, Martin

At doctoral level I welcome applications to research oral second language pedagogy, oral second language development, and the relationship between the deployment of tasks and language use and development within language pedagogy.


 

Jonathan Culpeper

Culpeper, Jonathan

  • Pragmatics (particularly involving sociopragmatics, politeness theory, speech act theory, corpus-based pragmatics)
  • History of English (specifically Early Modern English) (particularly involving historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics, historical corpus linguistics)
  • Stylistics (particularly involving the stylistics of drama, corpus stylistics)


 

Julia Gillen

Gillen, Julia

I welcome potential doctoral students studying children's and teenagers' digital literacies; literacies in early childhood; multimodality in various contexts; historical and contemporary studies of communication technologies where language is the particular focus. I am open to a broad range of topics and methodologies.

A recent PhD I have supervised to completion: S-Y Ruby Chen: Adolescents' linguistic practices in College-affiliated Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) in Taiwan.

Recent doctoral dissertations I have examined include:

Maryam Paknahad Jabarooty, PhD. Lancaster University. The construction of gender and sexuality in Iranian love blogs: a discursive approach to couples' love. 2011

Lynde Tan, PhD. Lancaster University.Adolescent literacies, multimodal textual repertoires, and digital media: exploring sites of digital literacy practices and learning inside and outside school. 2011

Mark Childs, PhD. University of Warwick. Learners' experience of presence in virtual worlds. 2010

Patrick Camilleri, EdD., University of Sheffield. A structurational interpretation of issues underlying the implementation of internet based systems in Malta. 2009

Michael Dunne, EdD., Manchester Metropolitan University. Out-of-classroom visits: Unravelling the experience of a short residential trip of primary school children. 2009

Jing Sheng, PhD., Lancaster University. Chinese migrant children's multiliteracy practices in Britain. 2009


 

Andrew Hardie

Hardie, Andrew

I would be especially interested in supervising PhD candidates working in the following areas:

  • corpora of languages other than English - and in alphabets other than Latin;
  • development and applications of corpus annotation ("tagging" at various levels);
  • corpus-based grammatical analysis, especially cross-linguistic and/or quantitative approaches to grammar;
  • investigating languageusing statistical collocation;
  • the exploitation of corpus methods and resources in the other fields of the humanities and social sciences (e.g. history);
  • or, more generally, in any area coherent with my research interests.


 

Luke

Harding, Luke

I am interested in supervising doctoral students in any of the following areas:

  • Language testing (particularly listening assessment, pronunciation assessment, specific purposes language testing, assessor decision-making and topics concerning the challenges of English as an International Language for language testing)
  • Second language listening comprehension
  • Attitudes towards accents and their impact on comprehension


 

Willem Hollmann

Hollmann, Willem

I would be happy to receive applications in any of these areas: cognitive-typological linguistic theory (especially construction grammar and the usage-based model), language change and the history of English, dialect grammar, as well as the arsenal of research methods used in all these areas of linguistics.


 

Francis Katamba

Katamba, Francis

I welcome applications in the areas of phonological theory and analysis, morphological theory and analysis, the description of the phonology and morphology of understudied languages (especially the languages of Africa) and English phonology and morphology.


 

Veronika Koller

Koller, Veronika

I am happy to take students working in the areas of corporate communication, language and sexuality, and metaphor.


 

Judit Kormos

Kormos, Judit

I am interested in receiving PhD students in the following areas: psychological aspects of second language (L2) acquisition including L2 speech production and comprehension, cognitive processes of L2 learning, the role of cognitive and affectivevariables in L2 learning, language learning motivation, special educational needs in language learning and teaching.


 

Tony Mcenery

McEnery, AcSS, FRSA, Tony

Corpus linguistics

Corpus-based approaches to any area of linguistics and applied linguistics


 

Greg Myers

Myers, Greg

I have supervised more than 25 PhD theses to completion, and I welcome applications in the areas of academic discourse, media discourse, environmental discourse, and qualitative research methods.


 

Uta Papen

Papen, Uta

Linguistic landscapes

Ethnographic studies of literacy practices in various settings (e.g. institutions, workplaces, communities, etc.)

Cross-cultural studies of literacy

Electronic literacies

Health and literacy

Literacy in schools

Adult literacy education in the so-called developing countries


 

Diane

Potts, Diane

I am excited by the prospect of working with international students and others in all areas pertaining to digital language learning, digital literacies, and computer-mediated communication.This may include ethnographic studies of highly diverse student populations in digitally mediated environments, case studies of digital/multimodal pedagogies in English as an additional language (EAL) or foreign language (EFL) classrooms, or studies of digitally-mediated task-based learning. Alternatively, prospective postgraduate students may be interested in exploring language learners' out-of-school digital literacies practices, particularly their dis/connections to formal educational contexts. These studies might be conducted in richly resourced contexts (ex. where bandwidth and/or electricity are not issues, and where a range of digital devices are available), or they might be conducted in contexts where necessity is driving innovations in the use of mobile technologies. The same topics could be explored from the perspective of teacher education and development. There are an ever-shifting range of ethical issues, conceptual issues, and practical issues that need addressing, ideally by researchers who reflect the diversity of the English language learning and teaching community, and I will be delighted to receive applications from students who bring a range of experiences to their doctoral studies.

Equally, I invite proposals from students with interests in multimodality, particularly those working within a social semiotic frame. Again, these proposals may address the needs of language learners,and might connect to any of the following: the the reweighting of meaning across semiotic systems and the increasing need for EAL/ESL/EFL pedagogies to address students' visual literacies; the potential of multimodal practices and/or tasks in language development; and curricular challenges and demands related to such pedagogies. Alternatively, students may design studies which focus on texts (in the broadest sense) rather than learners and/or educators, and explore the place of these texts within situated practice(s).

A third area of possible study is research in highly diverse classrooms, and explorations of pedagogies which draw on students' multilingual resources to further their academic success. Such research might attempt to deepen our understanding of the ways in which students' multilingualism could contribute to perspective-taking, abstract reasoning, and/or creativity. Research in this area might also be designed to help us to understand how multilingual learners come to understand themselves as resourced and/or disadvantaged by the relationship between their home language(s), English and (potentially) their additional languages.

Finally, I will always welcome proposals froms students who wish to research content-based language teaching in any of its multiple forms (ex. CBLT, CLIL). This may include work with immigrant and/or refugee populations in English dominant countries; studies in EFL contexts where core subjects in primary and/or secondary school are taught in English; research in contexts where English is an official language but where significant numbers speak other home languages; investigations of EAP pedagogies in post-secondary and/or professional contexts; or explorations of content-based designs outside mainstream educational contexts. Research in this area might focus on a specfic group of learners, a disciplinary context, teacher training and development, or policies and practices. Again, I am particularly interested in those adopting a social semiotic/SFL frame as well as those whose specific research questions might address issues of register, or who wish to delve into grammatics.


 

Andrea Révész

Révész, Andrea

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the area of second language acquisition, in particular, the roles of tasks, input, interaction, and individual differences in SLA.


 

Mark Sebba

Sebba, Mark

I would be interested in supervising research on the following topics especially:

Bilingualism, code-switching (particularly written code-switching, multilingual literacies and multilingual texts and signs), pidgins and creoles, sociolinguistics of orthography


 

Elena Semino

Semino, Elena

I currently supervise eight PhD students, working on a variety of projects in stylistics, metaphor studies, and discourse analysis. I am interested in supervising students in the following areas:

  • Cognitive stylistics: integration of linguistic analysis with theories of cognition (e.g. Schema theory, Blending theory) in order to study literary texts; the linguistic construction of fictional text worlds and fictional minds.
  • Corpus stylistics: application of corpus methods to the study of literary texts.
  • Metaphor studies: metaphor in literature, politics, science, health communication; integration of Cognitive metaphor theory with stylistics and discourse analysis; use of corpus-based methods in the study of metaphorical patterns in texts.


 

Mick Short

Short, Mick

I am happy to supervise students in most areas of stylistics (poetry, fictional prose and drama), film dialogue (and its interaction with non-linguistic factors in film) and theories in relation to interpretation and/or evaluation. Many (but not all) of my current students are working on a combination of traditional stylistic analysis and corpus-based work on texts. I have strong current interests in the study of (a) viewpoint, (b) speech, writing and thought presentation, (c) the analysis of drama and film dialogue (and how it is connected with performance and production/filmic factors) and (d) how stylistics can inform literature teaching and the integration of language and literature teaching in mother-tongue or second/foreign language situations .


 

Jane Sunderland

Sunderland, Jane

I am interested in supervising doctoral work on most aspects of gender and language/discourse, including language/discourse as they pertain to language education, to children's fiction and to African contexts. In particular, I would be interested in supervising a doctoral project on the relationship between the Harry Potter series and boys' literacies. I am currently supervisingfour full-time students PhD and three part-time PhD students.

The topics I am currently supervising include:

- gender and swearing in Kuwaiti Arabic

- gendered discourses around domestic responsibilities in a UK African disapora

- changing gender representation in EFL textbooks in Hong Kong

- EFL students' use of digital media in classroom learning

- celebrity masculinity in Japanese newspapers

- the reception of children's picturebooks featuring two-Mum and two-Dad families

- 'voice' in Mexican undergraduate's dissertations written in English


 

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Tusting, Karin

I am interested in supervising doctoral students working in the following areas:

- literacy studies, including workplace literacies, audit cultures and accountability, digital literacy practices, literacy practices in religious communities, and adult literacy.

- linguistic ethnography

- communities of practiceand situated learning.

- institutional ethnography

- discourse analysis


 

Johann Unger

Unger, Johann

I am particularly interested in supervising students in the areas of Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Policy, also more broadly in the areas related to my other research interests (see 'Research Interests' on my staff profile). I am currently co-supervising students working on parliamentary debates in Kenya, Arabic media constructions of Iraq, and Maasai identity.


 

Alan Waters

Waters, Alan

Due to my imminent retirement, I regret that I am no longer able to accept any further PhD students.


 

Andrew Wilson

Wilson, Andrew

I am especially interested in receiving proposals in the following areas:

  • Language and religion/spirituality
  • Language and psychoanalysis
  • Language and personality
  • The linguistics of altered states of consciousness
  • The discourse of fashion (including non-verbal aspects)


 

Ruth Wodak

Wodak, Ruth

(Critical) Discourse Studies (theories, methodologies)

Identity Politics (individual, collective; national, transnational)

Language and/in Politics

Discrimination, Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Sexism in/via Discourse

Analysis of (social) Media

Commemoration; collective memories; politics of the past

Oganisational Discourses and Practices


 

Important Note

If you wish to contact an individual member of staff with a query about research, please feel free to do so. However, please UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES send multiple copies of identical or almost identical emails to several or all members of staff. This wastes a great deal of staff time and may cause confusion about who is replying to your query. If the person you contact feels unable to help you, they will normally forward your message to someone who can. If you receive no reply, this may be because the addressee is on leave or at a conference; in this case, please make contact again after waiting a little while. Alternatively contact either Elaine Heron (e.heron@lancaster.ac.uk) or Marjorie Wood (m.f.wood@lancaster.ac.uk) and they will either answer your query or forward it to the most appropriate